Generally, traditional job posting services maintain databases of job positions and job seekers (e.g. Monster.com™). The job positions are posted by employers seeking to hire new employees. Whereas the job applicants search the job positions and submit their information to the employer. Conversely, the employer can search the job applicant database in order to find potential candidates.
One of the problems with the traditional job posting service is it only allows employers to disseminate their job postings to people actively seeking new employment. Only job seekers who are actively seeking new employment would search and apply for a position listed on a traditional job posting service. Consequently, the job postings are seen by a very small percentage of the total workforce. Furthermore, the only way to increase the number of potential job applicants is through traditional marketing which is very costly.
More recently, professional social networking styles of job posting services have come into the main stream. Most of these professional social networking services use a degree of separation (“DoS”) style of logic. Each “level” of group away from a particular person is a degree of separation (“DoS”) (this is similar to a family tree). For example, in FIG. 1, user A 100 invites users B1 102, B2 104, and B3 106 (collectively “B Users”); user B2 104 invites users C1 108 and C2 110 (collectively “C Users”); and user C1 108 invites users D1 112 and D2 114 (collectively “D Users”). From A's 100 perspective, the B Users are one (1) DoS, the C Users are two (2) DoS, and the D Users are three (3) DoS away from A 100. Therefore, if the system allowed for a user to converse with a person up to three DoS away, A 100 could disseminate a job posting with all the parties; however, if the system only allowed communication up to two DoS, then the D Users would not receive the job posting because they are three (3) DoS away from A 100. Extending the DoS example, from C1's 108 perspective, D1 112, D2 114, and B2 104 are all one (1) DoS away but C2 110 is two (2) DoS away because C1 108 would need to traverse first to B2 104, then to C2 110.
One such professional social networking system using DoS style logic is LinkedIn™. LinkedIn™ is focused on allowing users to build a network of peers and disseminate job postings to the connections in the network. More specifically, LinkedIn™ allows users to notify people in their network (within one DoS) via email. The basis behind this type of professional social networking is having users sign up with the service and invite peers to join as “connections.” Once the invited person accepts the invitation, the peers are linked to the inviting person's network. Later, the friends would invite other peers building their own networks. However, each user is permitted to have only one network. This type of professional social networking allows people to view other participants networks up to a predefined number of DoS away, provided the other user has permitted his or her network to be seen by other users. The user may then disseminate job postings to some or all the people within one DoS of the user.
The professional social networking services introduce several additional problems. First, some sites limit each user to having only one network. This means all of the users contacts or friends are all in the same network leading to unwieldy, cumbersome, and overly large networks with no way of segregating different types of friends and/or contacts. For example, there is no way to segregate business contacts from friends; they are all in the same network. This means, by using traditional DoS logic, any job listing would be shared with everyone in a user's network not just the user's business contacts. Further, some sites restrict a user to either have all of that user's contacts available or unavailable—there is no way to limit or classify which contacts will be available to other users or groups of users. This introduces the second major problem; the network cannot be used to target the job position to a particular type of person. The job posting is disseminated to all of the friends and/or contacts of a user within a certain DoS. This means the job posting is shared or blasted to people whose only qualification is being within a certain DoS from someone else. Furthermore, as the DoS increases the link to the initial person becomes tenuous—the farther away from the initial person, the less likely the recipient will be similar to and/or have a strong or meaningful relationship with the initial person. An additional problem is the lack of a way to provide users of the professional networking service to refer potential candidates. The system is limited to disseminating the job to those people who are part of the professional networking service and within a certain DoS. Yet another problem is there is no way for an employer to restrict job postings from other job post authors flowing to their network. It is common for employers to have their employees as part of their network. By allowing job postings to flow through the employer directly to their employees, the employer is allowing its employee base to be cannibalized by other job posters.
These problems amass to create an increasingly difficult and cumbersome method for employers to locate potential employees.